The Tale Of King Edmund 4

"Doesn't one's beliefs and experiences in life color one's senses? What a person views as common sense is largely affected by the society around them and the beliefs they hold. Knowledge from a blasphemous idiot will no doubt have been tainted by their blasphemous beliefs," I said, proud of the answer I'd given.

"As expected of you, your answer doesn't disappoint," Bor said, unfolding his arm and leaning forward, he said, "then do you think your experiences and beliefs have not dyed your perception? Perhaps the reason you're experiencing difficulty in understanding attribute magic is because what you consider common sense is wrong."

I was reluctant to accept his argument, but I recognized he was making good points. In fact, I had already thought of that. I was well aware that when it came to attribute magic the knowledge we had was either incomplete or only partially correct.

After careful deliberation, I replied, "Without question I hold biases too, however, that is irrelevant. It remains true that the words of a blasphemous fool inherently has no value."

"Oho! I like your passion, but scholars who let their emotions drive their actions are doomed to make mistakes and ignore vital pieces of information," Bor said, leaning back on his chair and folding his arm.

"OK then, if I read that book and gain no knowledge from it, will you give me back the time I will have wasted on such useless endeavor?" I asked harshly, growing more irritated by Bor.

He didn't say it explicitly, but he was intimating that I was being overly emotional and ignoring useful knowledge, and that annoyed me. How could I not get emotional, he was trying to defend the words of a blasphemer, how can he sit there with that smug smile and calmly utter the words coming from his mouth I wondered.

"Silas, in the first place no book guarantees you knowledge, it is up to each individual reader to interpret the words on a page and search for whatever hidden truths lay on that page. Not every reader finds that truth and readers often don't find the same truth from the same words," Bor said to me as he laughed lightly.

I clicked my tongue and turned away, tired of looking at the old man's face and his annoying smile. I looked towards the way I had come, at the common area hidden behind the stone shelves. What little of it I could see from my vantage point looked empty, perhaps there is no one there I thought to myself as I considered what to do.

I wanted to prove Bor wrong, I wanted to show him that I was correct and a blasphemer had no valuable knowledge to impart. I was going to read that book just to prove to Bor that I was correct, but I didn't want to be seen reading that book. Not only was it embarrassing, but I was also afraid people would think I agreed with the author's assessment of the gods, so I had to be careful.

"Fine, fine! I'll read the damned book, but mark my words, if I gain no insight from the book my respect for you will diminish," I said, trying to get in one last word, thoroughly aware that I had lost this verbal spar. Bor only laughed in response, picked up another book from the stack around him, and started reading, ignoring me.

I went searching for the book, and it was right where I'd left it, completely untouched. I picked it up, searched for a quiet corner—of which there were many, as there were very few people in the library—and started to read. I skipped a few pages ahead, doing my best to avoid reading any blasphemous words, and then finally settled on a page to start reading from.

I found a small village that isn't as dependent on the gods. The happiness I felt at the time can't be described in words. Have I found like-minded people? Well… it turns out they are also god worshippers in this village, however, the gods aren't directly involved in their lives like it is with other villages. I wonder why. Anyway, consequently, their magic isn't as powerful, in fact, there are only three mages in a village of about two hundred people by my estimate.

I wondered what he was talking about, I knew what the word village meant, but everyone called it a settlement. When I was learning to read and write I'd been taught words like village, city, and country; I was taught they were used to describe settlements of various sizes, though the words came from a foreign language so I'd never heard anyone use them. I was very curious about the village the author was speaking of though, only three mages? Then how could they survive? Did the Lycans not attack them? If the gods weren't directly protecting them, how were they fending off monsters that would encroach on their territory? I had so many questions, but I continued reading.

While traveling, a companion in our entourage had taught me various things, he was a mage so he was most knowledgeable about magic; although his knowledge of runic magic was lacking, it was still enough for me to grasp it.

It turns out runes are alphabets of the first universal language, luckily the god that transported me to Morus blessed me with understanding languages, and since all languages emerged from the first universal language, inevitably I came to understand the first universal language.

This was new, I had never heard of a language like that, in fact, language wasn't a thing I ever thought about in-depth. Even though I'd been taught how to read and write and some foreign language, all beings possessing intelligence spoke a common tongue. We didn't give it a name, we didn't question its origins, we just understood it to be the way to communicate.

Through the oracles, the gods imparted knowledge on us, and from the words of oracles, various myths were born. From the myths, we came to know of other worlds, other civilizations, and other languages, but our knowledge was fragmented, it was like catching glimpses of a dragonfly in motion through a small hole and trying to create a full picture from these glimpses; nevertheless, we were aware. But this first universal language was something I'd never heard of, perhaps I was simply lacking knowledge, perhaps a myth existed somewhere that shed a little light on it and I was simply unaware of it, perhaps, but this was the first time I'd ever heard of it and I was intrigued.

Runes, like any language, relies on syntaxes, the proper syntax births a useful tool of communication, without proper syntax it all becomes gibberish. I took pity on this village devoted by monster sieges, on the mages worn by constant battle. I took pity on them and decided to teach them how to properly use runes.

However, first I decided to create a safe learning environment; it would be difficult to properly learn anything while having to constantly fight against hordes of monsters swarming down on them, so I built a wall around the village and using the opportunity to display the effectiveness of runes, I engraved a purification rune on the walls.

Monsters being animals encroached by miasma, a purification rune should be enough to ward them off. Any of the monsters stupid enough to enter the area of effect of the purification will simply return to dust since a monster that is purified loses all its miasma—that is akin to every other living thing losing all its deus.

It finally dawned on me what village the author was speaking of, it was the Cribea settlement. The settlement was famous for the tall brick wall with complex runes inscribed on it that surrounded the settlement, making it one of the safest and most secure in the whole of Anderles. Even the warring settlement of Serkia never once attacked the Cribea settlement, a wise choice too, as Cribea had never once lost in a defensive battle.

Cribean mages weren't as powerful as the mages in our settlement, but their knowledge of attribute magic was leagues ahead of ours, this enabled them to create many useful artifacts and weapons, they were able to employ their knowledge of runes to make deadly traps too, the Cribean settlement without question was the most advanced of all the settlements in Anderles.

I had my reservations about some of the claims the author was making, for one, building that wall with magic would require magic on a scale attribute magic couldn't achieve, unless one took a few months to slowly work on it; from the words of the author, it didn't seem like they took that much time, and I couldn't accept that a mage not under contract with any of the gods was capable of that feat.

I was also curious about the time period, I had an inkling as to when the events the author was describing took place, but being before the walls of Cribea was constructed meant it was even farther back in the past than I'd initially thought; the walls of Cribea have stood for over 200 years now.

The faces the settlers made once they witnessed my magic were priceless. It's understandable, since that incompetent god was still a god, after all, the blessings he bestowed on me were no joke. My magic is on a level, not even the mages of this world—powerful as they are—can match. Of course, they were awestruck; that ended up being a good thing as they were more receptive to my teaching.

I wonder which of the gods granted this ungrateful fool blessings I thought as I flipped the page; for one who had been blessed by the gods to flout their grace so brazenly, I could feel that familiar heat start to rise in me again. To control myself I lifted my head to observe my surroundings, seeking something, anything, to distract me, but ultimately failing to find any as the nook of the library I was sitting at was empty. Nevertheless, the exercise itself proved to be useful, as I had calmed down somewhat and returned to reading the book again.

These people must be geniuses, either that or I am a very gifted teacher; they grasped the use of runes fast. They are now able to construct simple words, but they run into problems when trying to make conjugations. It's understandable, the logic of the language in this world ignores looking for links between different sentences, they do not know the words to link different sentences.

This has led to their runes not working as intended. With runes that serve multiple purposes, different sentences perform different functions, and those functions if not correctly linked perform independently of each other, and that causes mana to not circulate properly. The fix is simple enough, but they keep forgetting to add words to link different sentences.

Ah! This is the problem father is facing I thought as I read those words. The way it was explained made the problem and the solution sound simple, but if even father was struggling to solve it I had no doubts in my mind the problem was anything but.

I wanted to run straight to father and let him know what I'd found, and as I thought of the words to say to him, I realized I hadn't really found anything. Sure, I knew now what the problem was and what one needed to do to fix it, but I had no way of knowing if father didn't know this already. What if he's only struggling with finding the linking words I thought, the more I thought about it the faster my earlier enthusiasm vanished. I became resolute, I wouldn't say anything until I found those linking words—but that meant I would have to get my hands on the book my sister had spoken of. When I walked in father and others were reading it, I didn't know when they would be done, so I decided to wait, I would spend all night in the library if I had to. In the meantime, I would finish reading the book on the table in front of me.